30 Things To Do In Nagoya

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1. Nagoya Castle

1 km from city center

Historical Site

Tokugawa Ieyasu built this in the 1610s, and firebombing destroyed most of it in 1945. What you come for now is the reconstructed Honmaru Palace, its cypress rooms and reproduced screen paintings opened in 2018. The main keep has been closed since that year on earthquake-safety grounds, with no confirmed reopening date, so the golden roof dolphins are visible only from the grounds.

Tours starting from
₹6,518

3.8 /5

6 km from city center

Temple

Second only to Ise among Shinto shrines, Atsuta is roughly 1,900 years old and holds the Kusanagi sword, one of the three Imperial Regalia. The sword is a hidden object of worship and never goes on display, so what you see is a wooded precinct and plain Shinmei-style halls. The grounds are free and open at all hours.

Tours starting from
₹15,913

Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology

3 km from city center

The Toyota group began here, in the red-brick Taisho-era mill of the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. Staff run the machines rather than rope them off: looms clatter through a full weaving cycle, and the automobile pavilion fires up presses and metalworking rigs. It is the more hands-on of the city's two Toyota museums, and three minutes from Meitetsu Nagoya.

3 km from city center

Around 1,200 shops fill the covered arcades that grew up around Osu Kannon, and the mix is unlike anywhere else in Nagoya: vintage clothing racks beside second-hand electronics, Brazilian and Vietnamese kitchens beside old sweet shops. Most people come to browse and eat rather than to see any one thing, which makes it the easiest evening in the city.

Nagoya Travel Packages

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10 Nights / 11 Days

Japan Discovery Tour: Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Tokyo & Fuji 10N/11D

Osaka(3N) → Kyoto(2N) → Nagoya(2N) → Tokyo(3N)

Sold By: Probesten Tours(4.8 )

₹152,000/person

7 Nights / 8 Days

8 Days Adventure Japan Tour Package

Tokyo(2N) → Kyoto(1N) → Nagano(1N) → Shibukawa(1N) → ...

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₹143,100/person

12 Nights / 13 Days

All of Japan Tour Package

Narita(1N) → Mito(1N) → Sunflower Cruise(1N) → Sapporo(2N) &ra...

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₹220,500/person

7 Nights / 8 Days

8 Days Japan Escape Package with Kamakura and Enoshima Island

Tokyo (2N) → Hakone(1N) → Nagoya (1N) → Osaka(3N)

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₹139,000/person

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5. Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens

7 km from city center

One of the three most visited zoos in Japan, and large enough to take half a day once you add the botanical gardens beside it. The greenhouse is a designated Important Cultural Property, and the hilltop Sky Tower comes on a combined ticket. It is a local institution more than a tourist sight, so expect Nagoya families at weekends. Closed Mondays.

23 km from city center

Nagoya Castle's keep is shut, and this is where to go instead. Inuyama is one of only twelve original keeps left in Japan and one of five that are National Treasures, and the only one of those five with a balcony you can walk right around, high above the Kiso river. Twenty-five minutes from Meitetsu Nagoya, with an old castle-town street below it.

7. SCMaglev and Railway Park

4.5 /5

16 km from city center

Museum

JR Central parks 39 full-size trains here and lets you walk into them, including the MLX01 maglev and the 300X, both former world speed-record holders. Japan's largest model railway diorama runs alongside. Two things catch people out: it closes Tuesdays, and Kinjofuto is on the Aonami line, neither JR nor subway, so a Rail Pass or day pass will not cover the ride.

Tours starting from
₹3,531

10 km from city center

One of Japan's largest aquariums, spread over two buildings with around 500 species and particular depth on Antarctic and deep-sea life. It sits at the end of the Meiko subway line, about half an hour out from the centre. Worth knowing before you go: the rest of Garden Pier, including the Port Building and the Antarctic ship Fuji, is closed until the end of November 2026.

2 km from city center

The giant silver sphere wedged between the museum's two wings is the planetarium, at 35 metres the largest dome of its kind anywhere. Seats are limited and go early in the day. The rest of the building is built around live demonstrations rather than display cases: a tornado column, an electrical discharge lab, and a room held at minus 30 degrees.

3.7 /5

2 km from city center

Shopping

Nagoya's downtown, five minutes east of the main station by subway, and the part of the city still awake after the museums shut. Two stops earn the trip. MIRAI TOWER, from 1954 and the oldest TV tower in Japan, has an indoor deck at 90 metres and an open balcony at 100; older guides still call it Nagoya TV Tower.

82 km from city center

The most sacred site in Shinto, and plainer than that suggests: unpainted cypress halls in a cypress forest, torn down and rebuilt on the neighbouring plot every twenty years. You cross the Uji bridge and stop at a fence, because the inner sanctuary is not shown. Eighty minutes by Kintetsu and free to enter, with the Okage Yokocho lanes outside.

76 km from city center

Two Edo post towns on the old inland road to Kyoto, linked by eight kilometres of trail through forest and farmland. Walking Magome to Tsumago takes two to three hours and is the downhill direction. Tsumago keeps the stricter preservation, with cables buried and cars kept out by day; Magome is prettier and more commercial. Fifty minutes out by limited express.

19 km from city center

Over sixty buildings from Meiji-era Japan, taken down where they stood and rebuilt across a hillside by Lake Iruka, including the entrance hall of Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel. A steam locomotive and a Kyoto tram still run inside the grounds. The site needs most of a day, so do not try to pair it with Inuyama Castle in one trip.

3.7 /5

2 km from city center

Temple

Ieyasu had this temple moved here in 1612, after its original Gifu site flooded once too often. The buildings are 20th-century rebuilds, but the library below the main hall holds over 15,000 classical texts, including the oldest surviving manuscript of the Kojiki.

4.3 /5

2 km from city center

Museum

The Owari Tokugawa family's own collection, held on the grounds of their former residence: armour, swords, tea utensils, Noh masks and nine National Treasures. Its most famous holding, the Genji Monogatari picture scrolls, is also the one most visitors miss, since the originals come out for about two weeks each November only. Closed Mondays, and admission rises during special exhibitions.

Tours starting from
₹7,388

2 km from city center

The Owari Tokugawa lords retired to this estate, and the garden they left is a daimyo stroll garden of the full kind, with a central pond, a three-tier waterfall and a narrow ravine walk. It shares a site with the Tokugawa Art Museum, so the two are really one visit. A combined ticket with Nagoya Castle exists if you are paying cash.

30 km from city center

Twenty minutes by train, and three separate reasons to go: Oda Nobunaga's castle on Mount Kinka, reached by ropeway for a view over the whole Nobi plain; the Gifu Great Buddha at Shoho-ji, the largest dry-lacquer Buddha in Japan; and the Nagara river, where cormorant fishing has been practised for 1,300 years. The castle and the Buddha are year-round.

14 km from city center

A single preserved street of Edo merchant houses on the old Tokaido road, and the best answer to anyone who finds Nagoya all concrete. The town has made Arimatsu-Narumi shibori, a resist-dyed cloth, since 1608, and the Shibori Kaikan has artisans working in front of you and runs dyeing workshops. Twenty-five minutes out on the Meitetsu line.

6 km from city center

The largest Japanese stroll garden in the Tokai region, laid out as a miniature of the Kiso river running down to the sea, with a full sukiya teahouse at its centre. It is a short walk from Atsuta Shrine, which makes the pair a natural morning. Best in late autumn for the maples, and in winter for the rope cones strung over the pines.

4.2 /5

14 km from city center

Museum

Despite the name this is a global history of the car, not a Toyota showroom: around 150 vehicles from an 1898 Benz Velo onward, most of them not Toyotas. Do not confuse it with the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, which sits inside Nagoya city and is built around working machinery. This one is out in Nagakute on the Linimo maglev line.

Tours starting from
₹7,388

33 km from city center

One of the six ancient kiln towns of Japan, and the one that makes the red clay teapots and most of the country's lucky cats. The footpath is a 1.6 km loop past workshops, brick chimneys and walls built out of discarded kiln pipes, and it is free and open at any hour. Thirty minutes direct from Meitetsu Nagoya, one stop short of the airport.

22 km from city center

A flower park that turns into one of Japan's largest illuminations after dark, with a 200 metre light tunnel and a water display. The season runs from mid-October to the end of May, so it is not the December-only event it is often described as, but there is little point coming in daylight or in high summer. Thirty-five minutes by bus from Nagoya Station.

17 km from city center

Five areas built into the old Expo park at Nagakute, among them Satsuki and Mei's house from Totoro and the Grand Warehouse. It is somewhere to walk through rather than a ride park, and it is the ticketing that catches people out: entry is date-specified, sold in advance only, and released monthly for two months ahead. Forty-five minutes via Fujigaoka and the Linimo.

2 km from city center

At 220 metres this is the highest viewpoint in Nagoya, and unusually it is open to the air rather than glassed in. It looks down on the station towers instead of across at them, which is the difference from the deck at MIRAI TOWER. It stays open until ten at night, so it works well on an arrival evening when everything else has shut.

2 km from city center

Noritake's first porcelain factory stood here from 1904, and the red-brick kilns and chimneys still do. The grounds are free to walk; inside the Craft Center you watch bone china being thrown and painted, and can paint a piece yourself. It backs onto the Toyota Commemorative Museum and the two share a combined ticket, which is the sensible way to do them.

2 km from city center

Nobunaga's father founded this as the Oda clan temple in 1540, and it was here that the young Nobunaga threw incense at his own father's funeral. The building is now a modern tower inside the Osu arcades, with a projection-mapped wall and a mechanical puppet show of Nobunaga that runs to a timetable. Free, and five minutes from Osu Kannon.

37 km from city center

Three to four thousand maples planted along the Tomoe river since the seventeenth century, lit after dark through November, and one of the most photographed autumn sites in Japan. Outside that month it is a pleasant river gorge and not much more. It is also further than it looks: closer to two hours each way, whatever the shorter claims say.

16 km from city center

Around forty rides and a Miniland that rebuilds Japanese cities in brick, plus the SEA LIFE aquarium and a hotel on the same site. It is squarely for children between about two and twelve, and adults travelling without them will find better value elsewhere on this list. It shares the Aonami line with the SCMaglev park, so the two make one day at Kinjofuto.

1 km from city center

On the tenth floor of the Aichi Arts Center in Sakae, and worth the lift for one painting: Klimt's Life is a Struggle, one of very few Klimts in Japan. Picasso and a strong twentieth-century collection fill the rest. Of everything on this list it is the one to pick if you want Western art rather than Japanese craft or industry.

5 km from city center

The only temple in Japan belonging to no Buddhist sect, maintained jointly by all of them because of what it holds: relics of the historical Buddha, given by the King of Siam in 1904, which is where the name comes from. The grounds are quiet and free. Go on the 21st of the month, when the approach fills with a street market.

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FAQs on Nagoya

What are the top activities in Nagoya?

The top activities in Nagoya are Shoryudo Highway Bus Pass, Central Japan International Airport to Nagoya City Railway Ticket (One Way), A Day in Shirakawa Village and Takayama, Bic Camera Tourist Privilege Discount Coupon in Nagoya, Takayama and Shirakawa-go Day Trip from Nagoya, Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium.

What are the top sightseeing places in Nagoya?

The top sightseeing places in Nagoya are SCMaglev and Railway Park, Tokugawa Art Museum, Toyota Automobile Museum, Nagoya Castle, Atsuta Shrine, Osu Kannon Temple.

How can I commute within Nagoya?

The local train system is the best way to get sound the city. Japan has six subway lines and the most famous of them, the JR Tokaido Shinkansen, connects Tokyo and Nagoya. Nozomi, Hikari and Kodama are high-speed trains and the Japan Rail pass can be made for the Hikari or the Kodama trains. Apart from that highway buses and local trains ply on a regular interval too.
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Things To Do In Nagoya

"Japan’s industrial hub with samurai legacy and museums"

30 Things To Do In Nagoya

1. Nagoya Castle

2. Atsuta Shrine

3. Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology

4. Osu Shopping District

Nagoya Travel Packages

Japan Discovery Tour: Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Tokyo & Fuji 10N/11D

8 Days Adventure Japan Tour Package

All of Japan Tour Package

8 Days Japan Escape Package with Kamakura and Enoshima Island

5. Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens

6. Inuyama Castle

Top Hotels In Nagoya

7. SCMaglev and Railway Park

8. Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium

9. Nagoya City Science Museum

10. Sakae

11. Ise Jingu

12. Magome and Tsumago on the Nakasendo

13. Museum Meiji-Mura

14. Osu Kannon Temple

15. Tokugawa Art Museum

16. Tokugawaen

17. Gifu City

18. Arimatsu

19. Shirotori Garden

20. Toyota Automobile Museum

21. Tokoname Pottery Footpath

22. Nabana no Sato

23. Ghibli Park

24. Midland Square Sky Promenade

25. Noritake Garden

26. Banshoji Temple

27. Korankei Gorge

28. LEGOLAND Japan

29. Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art

30. Nittaiji

Things To Do In Nearby Places

FAQs on Nagoya

What are the top activities in Nagoya?

What are the top sightseeing places in Nagoya?

How can I commute within Nagoya?

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